Constantinople, v. 1 (of 2)

The arrival at Constantinople made such an overpowering impression upon me as to almost efface what I had seen during the previous ten days’ trip from the Straits of Messina to...

Every one turned toward the Asiatic shore. Skutari, the Golden City, barely visible to the naked eye, lay scattered over the summits and sides of her great hills, the morning mi...

Behind a crowd of Turkish porters, who go by on a run, bending beneath the weight of enormous burdens, there comes a sedan chair inlaid with mother-of-pearl and ivory, out of wh...

From time to time you come upon vast barren tracts devastated by some recent fire; hillsides with a few houses scattered here and there, and grassy spaces between them, intersec...

But suppose, now, we turn our attention again to Constantinople itself, and wander about as unrestrainedly as birds of the air? It is a place where one may give free rein to his...

We now descended the hill, and, after crossing the dry bed of a torrent and climbing up the ascent on the other side, found ourselves in another suburb, San Dmitri. Here almost...

Toward sunset we descended to the Golden Horn, and, taking our places in a four-oared käik, had scarcely pronounced the word “Galata!” before the graceful little boat was alread...

If you want to be really amused, though, just go into the Frankish shops, those which deal in everything, and where there are goods to suit all pockets. Hardly has your foot cro...

In other parts of the Great Bazâr it is as well for a stranger not to venture unless he is accompanied by a dragoman or one of the shopkeepers. Those are the interior parts of t...

This is perhaps the very best period in which to study the dress of the Mussulman population of Constantinople. In the last generation, as will probably be the case in the next,...

And this outrage still continues: these unhappy creatures walk the streets of a European city, live among men, and, wonderful to relate, refrain from tearing, biting, stabbing,...

As by day Constantinople is the most brilliant, so by night it is the gloomiest, city in Europe. Occasional street-lamps, placed at long distances one from the other, hardly suf...

Speaking of religion, while wandering about the streets and byways of Constantinople I used often to wonder whether, were it not for the voice of the muezzin, Christians would s...

Difficult as it may be to single out the Armenian at sight, there is no such trouble about the Greek, who differs so essentially in character, bearing, appearance, everything, f...

My expectations were very great and my curiosity was all on fire, and yet I realized then, as I do now, that the actual sight of a world-renowned object, no matter how fully it...

But the dominating sensation, as I have already said, is one of sadness, and that great poet who compared St. Sophia to a “colossal sepulchre” was not far wrong. On all sides yo...

A half hour before the appointed time two companies of soldiers wearing the uniform of zouaves stationed themselves in the square to keep the way cleared for the Sultan’s passag...

This spectacle of the state appearance of the Sultan is, as may be seen, a poor affair enough, very different from what it once was. Formerly the sultans only showed themselves...